Florence!

So, Florence may be one of my favorite places on Earth!! It was AMAZING!  But, once again, my adventure began with a rough start.  About an hour before we were to leave to catch the bus to Bassano del Grappa train station, my friend tells me that the hostel we booked wasn't looking too good.  Turns out the place had terrible reviews, complete with bed bugs, creepy owners who offer free wine in hopes to get the girls drunk and take advantage of them, and the police seem to have a strong interest in the establishment (that's never good).  There was absolutely no way we were staying in this place!  With about 20 minutes left until we had to leave, we finally found a hotel that was available for 6 people.  Of course ,it was much more expensive than we originally had wanted to spend, but at a time like this I don't think we really cared too much.  Lessons learned: NEVER let the boys book the hostel and ALWAYS double check the reviews on multiple websites.
Our rough adventure continued at the train station.  It seemed like everyone and their mom was trying to buy a train ticket when we arrived.  We finally found a self-help machine, but of course it didn't have the Florence train station listed on it, because that would have just been too easy.  Thank goodness we had looked up train schedules earlier in the week and remember that we would have to switch trains in the town of Padova, so we bought our ticket to there and decided to get the ticket to Florence once we got to Padova.  With 7 minutes until the Bassano train was leaving, we ran to the platform and jumped on!
The adventure do not end there... Once we got to the Padova station, we hauled a** to the ticket machine to purchase our tickets to Florence before everyone else got there.  With 4 tickets purchased we were going strong; only myself and one other girl to go.  What do you know, the train is full!!! SERIOUSLY what else could go wrong!  As we start to freak out we decided to check again, and again, and again.  Finally, it said the train we wanted was available again, but only first class.  We did not care at this point, and purchased them as quickly as we could! Woo, that was a close one!  We had about 2 hours to kill before our train left, so we headed to McDonald's (ew).

I ended up sitting with one of my travel buddies on the way to Florence.  Since we were first class and all, of course we got the best treatment around.  Free wine, little bread sticks, steak, and potatoes!  Just kidding, no steak or potatoes, but we definitely told our second class friends what they "missed out" on. ;)

After arriving in Florence, we ventured out to find our hotel, which turned out to be in a great location fairly close to everything!  Oh but wait, as soon as we thought everything was finally falling into place, the owner of the hotel was no where to be found! Not only that, but we were stuck waiting in this little hallway of an apartment-type building for 20 minutes because we didn't want to haul our stuff around anymore and he wouldn't answer his phone!

The rooms were very nice and spacious!  We immediately jumped in the shower and started to get ready.  When I went to plug in the hair dryer that one of the girls had brought, IT DIDN'T FIT!  Who knew Italians had more than one sized plug?!?! 4 girls and no blowdryer...what an experience!  This is one example of how you can dry your hair when you have little time and no blowdryer:

We had dinner at a cute little restaurant, where the waiter spoke a select amount of English, but was still great and hilarious!  Of course we had to get some wine, since it's "cheaper than water" around these parts.

After dinner we headed out to find a place to hang out, and happened to stumble upon a little gelato stand/bar.  Turns out to be the best thing that happened to us!  The owner, Julian and the other workers, Herman and Jerry (after he tried to tell me his name about 5 times and I still couldn't understand, he reverted to Jerry) were the best!  When I told Julian I was from Texas, his responded with, "Oh! Texas is the shit!"  I about died laughing.  Apparently a few years ago, some other Texans had come into the bar and said that and Julian quickly responded, "No!! Texas is beautiful!".  Obviously, he didn't understand the slang, but once they explained he fell in love with the expression!
After spending hours at our new favorite bar, we headed to a club named Twice, where a bunch of other CIMBA students were.  It was a ton of fun dancing around and bonding with all the new people we had met!  Around 4 o'clock, we headed home and went to sleep.

The next morning, on our way to find a place to eat, we ran into a couple guys from CIMBA who were headed to the pizzeria that the cast of Jersey Shore are apparently working at while they are filming in Florence.  Of course, we tagged along with them to see this soon to be "historical" landmark.  The pizza wasn't great but hey, when the show aires I can tell everyone that I've eaten there before, which basically makes me famous, right?

After eating, we all headed out to tour the city.  We walked around Florence for 8 hours straight, stopping at various things such as Dante's house, the fake David, a gelato festival, and the river.  Towards the end of the day, we climbed to the top of the Dome (all 463 steps), because my wise older sister said it was a must.  She was definitely correct, and my entire travel group thanked me for pushing us to do it!  The view was breathtaking, and we spent about 20 minutes up there just enjoying the beautiful view of Florence!

After the Dome, the girls and I decided it was time to do some shopping.  We all did a lot of damage, but found some great stuff!   I purchased a super cute pair of heels (I love shoes too much), a leather purse, a couple little gifts for friends, and a dress to wear out that evening.  By the end of the day, all of our feet were in some much pain it was almost unbearable.  Sadly, once we finished shopping we had to hurry back to the hotel and get ready for the night ahead!

The girls and I went to another cute little restaurant for dinner while the boys watched the big soccer game with some locals at our new favorite bar.  Once we were finished eating we joined them and the night began! By this time, we were all receiving free drinks and taking over the place.  At one point, I was serving gelato while the boys served drinks.  Later on we headed back to the club from the night before, but sadly it was not as much fun as before.  Way too many creepy Italian boys trying to hit on us, so we quickly left and headed back to the hotel for some sleep.

On Sunday, our train didn't leave until around 3, so the 6 of us wandered around Florence for a bit to waste time.  Thankfully, no we didn't run into any more mishaps or rough adventures getting back to Bassano del Grappa.  While we waited for the bus to take us back to campus, we decided to grab some  food.  Warning:  NEVER eat Chinese food in Italy.  It was definitely no Pei Wei.

Overall, the weekend was a great success and I am so happy that everything turned out great!  Now, back to another 4 days in the classroom before my next adventure.  The location is still undecided, but anywhere in Europe is going to be great and I can't wait to travel some more!

 Until then...Ciao!

From Texas to Paderno Del Grappa

So I am a little late on starting a blog, but better late than never.  The adventure to get to Italy had a rough start, including torrential downpour on the way to DFW, one of the entrances being shut down due to an oil spill, a 3 hour delay, and a full 7 hours of sitting in the London Gatwick airport (I did A LOT of people watching).  I finally made it to my hotel outside Venice around 12am Sunday, after a terrifying taxi ride I might add!  The Italians definitely don't care about speed limits, that's for sure!  My hotel room was strange.  You had to stick your key into a slot in the wall or the lights would randomly turn off, and my shower/bathtub had no curtain or door.  Oh, and it took be about 5 minutes to figure out how to flush the toilet.  Apparently in Italy, instead of there being a handle on the toilet, there is a large button-type thing on the wall that you press.  The elevators were extremely tiny.   The capacity was 8 people, but I would be surprised if you could fit 4 into one.  On Sunday I went into Venice and wandered around the city aimlessly for about 4 hours.  It was very pretty and I took tons of pictures (don't ask me of what because I have not a clue).  I purchased my first gelato of the trip while in Venice, and it was delicious!!!

Monday I headed to the Istituto Filippin, located in the lovely city of Paderno Del Grappa at the base of Mt. Grappa!  The campus is GORGEOUS!  Heaven on Earth!  The only problem is no air-conditioning, but I have managed so far.  There are also Italian boarding school students staying here; we share the campus.  It is quite entertaining to watch them all race outside every break they have to smoke as my cigarettes as possible before they have to return to class!  I have a single bedroom, which is how most of the rooms are.  I got very lucky because I have an actual shower in my bathroom, whereas almost all of the other rooms in my building have a shower head, drain, toilet, sink, and mirror all in one square room with nothing dividing them!  I might ad that I also got one of the best views from my room/bathroom!  Monday night I went to the campus bar (and yes this does mean that there is an actual BAR ON CAMPUS) with some girls I met on the bus to campus.  Almost all of the CIMBA (that's the program's name) students were there, and it was very fun to meet people!  Everyone has been so friendly!

Classes started Tuesday.  I am taking Entrepreneurial Strategies and Intro to Marketing Strategies.  Both my professors are great and make class fun!  It's a lot of work though.  Each class is an hour and a half long and in the afternoons, twice a week, we have a long 4 hour block in one of the two classes.  I already have a test tomorrow and we have been attending class for 3 days, but I guess that's what happens when you cram an entire semester into 4 weeks.  Tuesday evening some of the students went to the mall in a neighboring town.  It was so strange; one side had stores you would normally find at a mall and the other side was a Walmart-type place, with groceries and household items.  I purchased an Italian straightener (since my transformer decided to stop working the second day I was in Italy).

Tonight (Thursday evening) I am going into the town of Bassano with some other students!  The CIMBA program is great because they set up a ton of little bus trips to different neighboring towns, like the mall trip and the Bassano trip tonight.  I also took "Survival Italian" this morning (another thing set up by the CIMBA program) to learn a few key phrases that should make it easier to communicate with the Italians!

This weekend I am traveling to Florence with 7 other people in the program! We leave at 1pm tomorrow after classes! YAY YAY YAY :)